Gothic ghost story featuring children possessed of malevolent spirits and mysterious deaths at a small town America sunflower farm. Roy Solomon (Dylan McDermott ) moves with his wife and three kids from Chicago to a remote North Dakota sunflower farm to make a fresh start on a new, healthier and safer life. In reality, they're running from the ghost of their daughter's drunk-driving accident, which hospitalized one of her brothers. John Burwell (John Corbett), a passing drifter, starts work as the family's man Friday and quickly becomes their trusted employee. As things begin to get dark, however and as ravens begin to circle the ranch, the Solomon kids begin to see queer spectral shapes around the house. One of them keeps what he sees to himself and the other is accused of attention seeking but there can be no mistaking what they are seeing as the signs become more threatening and ominous. Is there a presence at work in the house? What happened here that made the previous occupants leave so quickly? Have they even fully left.

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The Messengers may seem like another typical horror, haunted house type film. And maybe it is, but the way it delivers the genre is different. There are many extremely chilling and well put together sequences that make the film scary and unique in many ways. The jolts never seize, which is a definite good point. There are also a lot of different types of scary moments, like jolty, creepy, suspensful, sickning etc... It isn't ridiculously gory, just very steady and awesomely crafted horror flick... watch.

The opening scenes of this movie were enough for me to switch it off and wait for the rest of my family to get back and hold my hand. The dvd finally went back on and I thought that the first 30 minutes or so were extremely eerie - the weird goings on, the incredibly creepy little boy who keeps laughing and dancing along to the horrific, Ring-like apparitions, and that nerve-annihilating scene at breakfast with the little boy's cereal spoon... I really thought this was going to rival some of the other very scary things I had seen.

I was wrong.

After the first 30 minutes the film lost the atmosphere completely. I began to be bored by the ham-handed obvious clues - HOW many ravens does it take to tell you not to go into teh cellar? I was also left cold by the acting of both parents who seemed to be almost as bored as I was. The 'twist' was so obvious within seconds of the arrival of one of the characters and after that the film continued to plummet downhill. The ending was absolutely ridiculous and predictable.

My thoughts would be, watch The Grudge, The Ring, the Amityville Horror or the Shining. Messengers could have been so much more especially as I say, the first 30 mins were very impressive but it seems teh film-makers gave up - I would advise you to do the same, look elsewhere, there are better stories to be had.

This is a good haunted house movie, which doesn't do anything new, but tells its story quite effectively.A family of four move into an abandoned farmhouse, located somewhere in North Dakota. Dylan McDermott plays the father, Roy Solomon. Penelope Anne Miller plays the mother, and they have two children, a teenage daughter named Jess played by Kristen Stewart, and a toddler boy named Benny. They've moved to the sticks from Chicago, because Jess was involved in a serious drink-drive accident, injuring her brother. The family have chosen to relocate, in order to escape the unfortunate past, and to make a living on the sunflower farm.Before long there are warning signs that all is not well with the house. Discoloured patches appear on the walls and the children see spectral images on the walls and ceilings. Inanimate objects start to move about the house. Crows start to pester Roy and deplete his crops. However, a passing drifter, John, who's played by John Corbett, helps the family to get rid of the crows.Jess tells her parents about the very strange goings on in the house but they are disbelieving, at least initially...This is a fair ghost story, but not quite up there with the very best of them, i.e. films like The Devil's Backbone, The Orphanage, and The Conjuring - The Devil's Backbone - Special Edition [Blu-ray], Orphanage [Blu-ray], and The Conjuring [Blu-ray] [2013] [Region Free].Read more ›

This is a haunted house story, plain and simple - but it's refreshing to see one with a decent cast and so well executed. The story is nothing new - family from the city move to country to escape their family problems... house they get turns out to have a past, and may be haunted.There are no big gore moments, but plenty of atmosphere created by carefully NOT showing you everything for much of the movie, so that when something is seen, the effect is maximized. The ending is not much of a surprise, but the tension mounts thanks in particular to a good turn from Kristen Stewart as Jess, the teenager.All in all, quite routine, but efficient enough to be worth a watch if you like the haunted house genre.

A family, having some problems and searching for a new start, move into a rambling old house in the middle of nowhere, where the teenage daughter starts experiencing poltergeist-type activity written off by her parents as an attempt to leave the unfamiliar pile and return to their old home.

Despite being a hugely unoriginal derivative piece, The Messengers isn't a bad film, and manages to keep up the suspense despite churning out every horror trope in the book from "shady figure moves quickly across front of screen" via "something in the basement" and sinister crows to the man possessed by the house who tries to hack down the door to reach his wife a la The Shining (1980). It owes most perhaps to films like The Amityville Horror (1979) and later films like Dead Birds (2005) but its lack of originality prevents it from coming anywhere close to them.

The acting is passable; the surly dad, stressed mum, anxy teenager and hunky farm-hand stereotypes were pulled off well enough by the cast. A creepy and intriguing old man who tries to buy the house off the family early in the film created an interesting thread that was unfortunately dropped.

All in all despite missed opportunities and a derivative jumble of horror tropes, a watchable horror film with a few creepy moments. Maybe 3.5 stars.